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Guardian column answers itself

Why don’t women win Nobel science prizes?
Hannah Devlin
….
In recent years, the average age of recipients has been steadily climbing. Between 1931 and 1940 the average age of physics laureates was 41. It has risen steadily since, and so far this decade, it is 68. This over-cautious approach, where scientists are rewarded for discoveries often decades-old, means younger scientists who are still active, a greater proportion of whom are women, miss out.

That’s actually the basic gender pay/achievement/power gap right there. More men stick with the career.

22 thoughts on “Guardian column answers itself”

  1. Its also reflects past sexism. That women were discriminated against in careers in science 40-50 years ago is fairly unarguable but also can’t be corrected without a Tardis and doesn’t mean today’s young female scientists face similar hurdles.

  2. She’s getting right good kicking the comments section. I’ve noticed that alot recently. Have they suddenly had a change of readership or the level of batshitery has reach such a level the locals are noticing?

  3. The Unused Testicle

    Time for the introduction of the WNP.

    Only needs one qualification to win it, and you can decide whether you qualify in the same way that Caitlyn did.

  4. It’s more than that. Larry Summers had it right – men and women have about the same average IQ, but men are overrepresented on both the high and low ends of the bell curve.

  5. Many of those coffin-dodgers don’t just stick with the career until retirement age, but well beyond. Barry Barish, joint winner of this year’s Nobel for Physics, is 81 years old; he appears to still be employed by Caltech. I’m sure other science Nobel winners fit the same pattern.

  6. One of the people, Prof Ron Drever, who should have be included in this year’s Physics prize wasn’t. Because he died earlier this year.

    Einstein didn’t win his Nobel until 1921, 16 years after his Nobel.

    Quick prizes are generally won when experimenters who prove previous theories. Either to the experimenters (Penzias and Wilson) or the theorists (Higgs and Englert).

  7. The unused etc.
    I was going to say the same thing. Alternatively, we could introduce Nobel prizes for gender studies, intersectionality, LBQWERTY dance, etc.

  8. So Much For Subtlety

    DevonChap – “Its also reflects past sexism. That women were discriminated against in careers in science 40-50 years ago is fairly unarguable but also can’t be corrected without a Tardis and doesn’t mean today’s young female scientists face similar hurdles.”

    I think I could argue that. The late David Stove pointed out that the idea women have the same levels of intelligence is an assumption that has yet to be proven.

    What we do know is that physicists do not age well. Young physicists will do the best work they ever do. Mathematicians too. Basically if you have not done anything ground breaking by 30 you never will. Most of them do their best work by the time they are 25. Virtually none of them do anything remotely interesting after the age of 40.

    Take Einstein. His Annus Mirabilis was 1905. He was born in 1879. So he was 25. Ten years later most of his good work was collaboration. By the time he was 40 he was spending a lot of time on a wasted effort to prove Quantum Theory wrong.

    The only difference between Einstein at 25 and Einstein at 40 – apart from massive more resources and experience for the latter – was age. Or I think testosterone. Levels of all sorts of hormones decrease over time – and with them go the ability to do really good work. Good genes, a good education, none of that matters compared to the desire to do good work only the young have.

    I note women have significantly lower levels of testosterone.

  9. So Much For Subtlety

    The Nobels disproportionately reward pale males because Western civilisation, especially the most advanced bits of it, are the work of pale males. Women have mostly cooked and cleaned.

    Everyone else has been standing around doing pretty much eff all. While the pale males get on with it.

    Sure, the Chinese invented paper and the Arabs may have inflicted algebra on the world. But what have they – or anyone else – been doing lately? It is not as if there are dozens of intellectually active universities in Africa full of Black professors throwing out brilliant ideas like an exploding water boiler blasting out its rivets. It is not as if anyone is ignoring the contributions made by Pakistani and Indonesian scientists. Brazilian ones for that matter.

    Yes, the Nobels are highly political, and yes they are throwing prizes the way of the token woman or two. But no, there is no massive conspiracy to deprive women of the credit that is their due. If women want to win Nobel prizes they can make a contribution to the world and earn them like anyone else.

    Of course the Nobel committee will fold and will soon start handing out prizes to random women who have done nothing of note. They did give one to Obama after all.

  10. SMFS

    Nobels in the hard sciences are a reflection of those doing basic research (the cutting edge stuff). It is only really worth doing that if you have caught up to the cutting edge – which is why the majority of Nobels go to Westerners and more recently to a few Japanese, who started doing cutting edge stuff in the 80s. It’s an indicator of how advanced a country was about 30-40 years ago. As the Chinese reach the cutting edge they’ll have to do basic research and there will be lots of Chinese Nobel winners 30 or so years later. (sometime in the 2050s to 60s).

  11. JerryC

    Another aspect of male outliers is that men are overrepresented on both the high and low ends of the bellend curve, although recently a good number of women with public access (journalists, politicians and celebs) are challenging this.

  12. The great thing to remember about Rosie Franklin was that she didn’t take photograph 51. It was taken by a male research student.

  13. Surely, if the SMFS theory about testosterone and physics is true, all the best physicists of the future will be black?

    Could someone point out all the science that women did which did not win a Nobel? And explain how it was better than the science that won at a similar time?

    Aung San Suu Kyi seems to value her people and culture more highly than her Nobel; good for her.

  14. Another aspect of male outliers is that men are overrepresented on both the high and low ends of the bellend curve, although recently a good number of women with public access (journalists, politicians and celebs) are challenging this.

    +1

  15. I sneeze in threes

    Jocelyn Bell Burnell missed out on a Nobel even though she discovered pulsars.
    I don’t know if it was sexism or just as she was the grad student the supervisor gets the credit.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jocelyn_Bell_Burnell

    “The paper announcing the discovery of pulsars had five authors. Hewish’s name was listed first, Bell’s second. Hewish was awarded the Nobel Prize, along with Martin Ryle, without the inclusion of Bell as a co-recipient. Many prominent astronomers criticised this omission,[8] including Sir Fred Hoyle.”

  16. Bloke in Costa Rica

    Vera Rubin should for sure have got a Nobel, as should Chien-Shiung Wu. Jocelyn Burnell probably should have.

    If Aung San Suu Kyi actually is crushing Islamic insurgents and driving their chattels out of her country then that’s probably a bigger contribution to peace in the region than the stuff that got her the Nobel in the first place.

  17. “But when, year after year, the demographic of winners perpetuates an entrenched stereotype of old white men being the only heroes in science,”

    Notice that she doesn’t mention any of these great scientific advances made by non-white males.

  18. Firstly, in order to attract a high value mate, men have to compete with other men for their rank in the male dominance hierarchy, whilst there is no parallel for women (who are judged according to youth and beauty). Secondly, the male brain is predominantly hard-wired for understanding and building systems, whilst the female brain is predominantly hard-wired for empathy. It is therefore inevitable that men make greater achievements in science.

  19. When I was young we had a female winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry – Dorothy Hodgkin.
    So, in my opinion, the Grauniad is talking nonsense as usual and some of you guys are being fooled into talking on the basis of their falsities.

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